The Gradual (31 page)

Later I took a shower, standing in the half-hearted and tepid dribble. The water ran out just as I had finished rinsing my hair and beard. Towelling myself I did something for which I had rarely had time or interest while I was travelling and stood before the full-length mirror attached to the wall of the shower cubicle.

I first glanced quickly at the reflection of myself, then with a feeling of surprise I looked again, then I looked more closely, and finally I stared in astonishment.

I had of course been looking at my reflection several times a day, but only superficial moments when brushing my teeth, combing my hair, and so on. I was used to seeing myself. I had felt for some years I was not ageing well – my skin had a sallow appearance, the flesh of my cheeks was starting to sag, deep creases had appeared around my eyes and mouth, there were wrinkles on my forehead, my neck, and worst of all a dewlap was starting to dangle around my throat. My new beard helped disguise it, but only partly.

I was more than fifty years old, well into middle age. There was no escape from the reality that all the blessings of youth had fled. My physical appearance was frankly unappealing and I knew it was because I took hardly any physical exercise, or when I did so it was the wrong sort and was over too quickly, that when I worked I was usually seated, that I was careless with the kinds of food I ate, but mostly it was because I was no longer young and took poor physical care of myself.

That night, alone on the ship, alone in my cabin, with time on my hands and little else to think about, I looked at myself as if at a stranger. I was amazed by what I saw.

It was my eyes I noticed first. I was used to what I saw in the mirror: the invariable surrounding of dried or darkened skin, the puffy eyelids with scattered lashes, a distinct yellow tinge in the sclera, with several visible papillae. My eyes always made me look tired, strained, as if I had been reading too much and too long, staying awake instead of sleeping, a revelation of a generally unhealthy lifestyle. But now I saw that my eyes had cleared! The whites were almost untrammelled, with no trace of that unpleasant liverish tinge. The irises were the calm pale blue I had cherished when I was a young man. The eyelids looked taut. The darkness and looseness around the eyes had disappeared.

I started examining myself with a feeling of increasing surprise and a growing sense of mystery. My face was more or less unlined, except for tiny creases where I smiled. My cheeks were smooth and firm. I pulled at the area below my chin, lifting the tufts of my beard and trying to see my throat and neck clearly. There was nothing loose there, no sagging, no sign of even an incipient dewlap.

I found a hand mirror and held it behind my head while I looked in the main mirror. My hair was dark again, dark all over without a single streak of grey. There were none of those faded areas which had been spreading inexorably, and which, if I thought of them at all, I had deluded myself that perhaps they made me look mature, distinguished. And my hair was growing thickly again. I now had the same full head of hair that had been mine throughout my twenties and most of my thirties. The thin patch that I knew about but tried to pretend away, the increasing spread of baldness on the crown of my head, had entirely disappeared. I touched my scalp with a press of my fingers, feeling the healthy growth.

My stomach was flat, my legs and arms were firmly muscled. My shoulders looked broader. The mat of untidy grey hair across my chest, straggling up around my throat, had all but vanished: I now had a faint sheen of dark chest hair. My buttocks were firm. My back was straight. When I expanded my chest the motion felt strong, pleasing. I reached down, touched my toes. I could not remember the last time I had been able to do that. Overall I was leaner without being thinner. I was in terrific shape.

In some way I could not understand, something like two decades had been stripped from me. My body was once again that of a young man. I was still at least fifty-four years old, I thought and felt the same, the substance of all my memories and my experiences in life remained with me. I was unchanged. But I was also renewed.

I had been vaguely aware that something was changing. I had been feeling a gain in strength, in stamina, I had been sleeping better. And I had seen some of the physical changes in the mirror. But small daily changes are imperceptible, and it was only during this solitary night in the ship that I fully noticed what had happened.

Time fled from me – I suffered gradual detriment. Youth attached to me – I gained gradual increment. Balance remained.

Absolute time, ship time: the difference became personal time lost.

Absolute age, travel through the gradual: the difference led to personal rejuvenation gained.

I slipped on some clothes then ran the length of the companionway, breathing the warm stale air but invigorated by the feeling of agility, strength, stamina that coursed through me. Afterwards my increased heart rate returned to normal almost immediately.

How had this happened? The constant fresh air cleansed by the sea winds? The endless bounty of sunshine? Even, perhaps, the frequent stresses and strains of marching around island shores, burdened with my possessions, following the opaque and sometimes inconsistent instructions of the adepts? Certain parts of my body had felt the effects and after-effects of those incidents. But, no. That could not be the only reason. Other people exercised far more often and consistently than me and they did not see the years slipping away from their appearance.

Once before, when I returned home after the first tour, I had been faced with a radical turn of events I could not comprehend. In the end, that baffling loss of time, or gain, had an explanation of sorts. I never fully grasped it, but for all that it was an explanation. Now I had suddenly lost years of my physical life, decades of my physical life, but in an altogether different way.

Could this be another manifestation of the gradients of time, the gradual?

When I was back in my cabin the feeling of being trapped bore down on me again. I took to the bunk. The small room was still too warm for comfort but I kept the cabin door wedged open. I lay awake.

After an hour of this I managed to force the porthole open, sealed with rust or paint, but which gave way after a struggle. This allowed a refreshing breeze but also admitted the noises from the town. I sat up, leaned with my back against the cabin wall and the open porthole beside my head, listening to the racket from the shore: the shouting voices, occasional screams or loud laughter, music belting out from five or six separate loudspeakers, engines revving and roaring. At times I heard the penetrating electronic sirens of emergency vehicles, their warning lights flashing, as they pushed slowly through the crowded area, nudging the pedestrians aside.

The night wore on. I remained unable to sleep. Eventually most of the motorbikes and sports cars were driven away, the rowdy shouts died down, no more ambulances appeared. Only the music remained, maddening me, because it was always difficult for me to hear music and make it unimportant. Any kind of music made me listen to it.

When I first had the porthole open I found it more or less impossible to separate the music from the rest of the commotion in the noise-filled streets, but in the early hours the lack of other sounds meant I could discern the tunes, the harmonies. What they were playing was what I thought of as the lowest denominator of popular music: repetitive chords and simple tunes, heavy bass lines, a thudding, unchanging drumbeat, the words chanted or shouted. It was for me a form of private torture. It drilled into my mind, blanked my thoughts, gave me back nothing I could like. It made me fail to understand why others might like it.

Then suddenly I was fully alert. They were playing something based on the main theme from
Tidal Symbols
!

Who was it? A live group? A heavily amplified recording? I turned, pressed my face to the porthole gap, then my ear, to try to hear better, but the small circular window was designed only to open to a crack. There it was again! The main theme, the chordal progression, the brief elaboration, the shift of key. The music was mine because it came from my soul, my life, my emotions, because it was the first work of mine to be recorded, because it came from a remembered part of my life, because I loved it. It was a part of myself.

Whoever was playing it, whoever was on the record, had turned it into something bland and loud and rhythmic, had made it cheap and repetitive, made it obvious and moronic, but it was still mine.

The army had made my brother into a soulless soldier, but he was still mine.

From my narrow view through the porthole I tried to see what I could of what was going on out there. Most of the buildings were at last darkened for the night, but a short parade of bars, cafés and clubs at street level were still lit with flashing neon signs. One of them had a picture window, brightly illuminated from within. I could see hardly any details but I could make out the blurrily silhouetted heads and shoulders of the people by the window, moving up and down, dancing to the repetitive, obvious, brainless version of my music.

In the end I barely slept even after the music finally went quiet. I may have dozed for an hour or two, but it was with that unsatisfying feeling of semi-sleep, restless and aware, constantly shifting position. The sky was lightening in the east. Large cleaning vehicles moved slowly through the streets and the harbour zones. Some of the operatives yelled to each other and bins crashed and rattled as they were emptied into the hopper. Grinding motors roared from within the trucks as the trash was crushed and compacted.

I moved outside to the promenade deck before Kan returned to the ship. From the deck I had a good view of the harbour as well as most of the other decks. The ship was slowly returning to life as members of the crew filed back on board then went below to start up the pumps and generators. I saw two uniformed officials going to the Shelterate building and unlocking it. The striped awning was permanently in place but there were no adepts anywhere around.

I was glad to breathe the fresh air and stretch my legs – I was still quietly celebrating the ease with which I could use my body. There was none of the stiffness I had felt in the past during the first hour or so after waking every morning. I realized it must have been the norm for some time but this morning was the first in which I really appreciated it.

The town seemed quiet and clean, not at all as it had been during those long hours of bright lights and hideous loudness. The nighttime revellers were presumably sleeping off their excesses. All the bars and nightclubs along the front were closed and shuttered. A water truck whooshed down the road beside the harbour, spraying over the few small pieces of rubbish that remained on the road after the night’s celebrations. Some traders appeared with wheeled stalls and set up their displays of fruit, flowers and wines. I saw a team of cleaners walking aboard the ship, hauling trolleys of fresh towels and bedclothes. Supplies of food and drink were being delivered to the ship from the shore by catering companies, carried aboard by young staff. Other goods were loaded into the two large holds by the crane that stood above the harbour.

I noticed that a group of passengers were waiting around outside the Shelterate building, but no ships had docked recently and the boat I was on was the only one in the harbour. The adepts’ area was still unoccupied.

The temperature was starting to rise with the sun.

I finally saw Kan and the other adept, Renettia, walking along the quayside. I went down through the ship to meet them at the companionway, but inexplicably I must have missed them somehow. I found them waiting for me back on the promenade deck where I had been standing. My bags were beside them. I was ready to leave but Renettia raised her hands to halt me.

‘Msr Sussken, you must remain on the ship. We have to discuss your options.’

‘My options? I’ve been waiting all night. I want to go ashore.’

‘Not yet.’

‘Kan told me there was a problem with the Shelterate rules, but that you would resolve it.’

‘Yes, but options are to be discussed.’ I glanced at Kan for confirmation but she was staring away from me, across the outer harbour wall. ‘This is Kan’s home island. The gradual effects are so complex here that you need a native of the island to help you. If you are to leave and cross to Choker of Air, there will be problems for you when you arrive unless you are prepared properly.’

‘This means you want more money?’ I said.

‘If you leave Hakerline, Kan’s adept abilities will be diminished. You will need both of us to accompany you.’

‘So how much more?’

‘Understand – the gradual here on Hakerline is strong, has a complex field pattern. Kan is trained to deal with that. But if you cross to Temmil, Choker of Air, you enter a new gravitational agenda. Gradient on Temmil is unidirectional. You know what that means?’

‘I just want to be there,’ I said.

‘The two islands have an intense temporal stress between them, but they counter-balance, one against the other. Each compensates for the other.’

‘Where do my options come into this?’

‘You told Kan you are planning to meet someone on Choker of Air.’

‘It can wait,’ I said. ‘Mostly I want to get off this ship.’

‘You were on Temmil once before?’

‘I was.’

‘And you crossed from here to Temmil?’

‘The other way around. I came to Hakerline from Temmil. You know why – the tour organizers made the travel arrangements. None of us knew anything about gradients and gravity.’

‘You know now the consequence.’

‘Are you asking for more money?’ I said.

‘One hundred Hakerline talents.’

That surprised me, but I said, ‘I’ve already paid Kan sixty. I’ll give you fifty.’

‘We don’t bargain.’

‘What do I get for the extra? I’ve spent nearly all the cash I’m carrying.’

‘There is a bank here in Hakerline Promise. We take you there.’

‘You said there were options. What if I don’t pay?’